Over the past nearly five decades during which successive US administrations have officially enforced an embargo against Cuba, there have been several instances where top US government officials sought to normalize relations with that island country.

According to recently declassified documents, a top aide to Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State under President Gerald Ford in 1975, drafted a secret memo which recommended normalizing relations with Cuba. 'Our interest is in getting the Cuba issue behind us, not in prolonging it indefinitely,' the memo stated.

Apparently, Kissinger's office produced the report just as the Ford administration was engaged in secret diplomacy with representatives of Cuba to lessen hostilities. The rationale indicated was that tense relations with Cuba weakened US relations with other Latin American countries, and in the context of the Cold War provided an opening for the Soviets.

The report went so far as to describe US antagonism toward Cuba as 'an intrinsically trivial issue.'

'If there is a benefit to us in an end to the state of 'perpetual antagonism,'' the report to Kissinger noted, 'it lies in getting Cuba off the domestic and inter-American agendas – in extracting the symbolism from an intrinsically trivial issue.'

In an article for Cigar Afficionado, Peter Kornbluh and William LeoGrande, both experts on US relations with Cuba, provided evidence of efforts by a number of US presidents from Kennedy to Carter to Clinton to improve relations with Cuba. 'The historical record,' the authors wrote, 'contains important lessons [for President Obama] on how an effective effort at direct diplomacy might end, once and for all, the perpetual hostility in US-Cuban relations.'

President Jimmy Carter even expressed to the author's of the article his regret that he hadn't been more successful in normalizing relations with Cuba. 'I should have gone ahead and been more flexible in dealing with Cuba and establishing full diplomatic relations,' Carter was quoted as saying.

Five years ago, a declassified audio recording of a conversation between President Kennedy and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy about the possibility of a secret meeting with Cuban officials was released. The conversation was recorded in November 1963, just weeks before Kennedy's assassination.

Kennedy's advisors believed that 'the sweet approach,' i.e. moving toward better relations with Cuba, might entice Cuban President Fidel Castro to be more favorable to the US than the USSR.

Cuban President Fidel Castro apparently responded positively to such overtures. In a May 1963 ABC News report on Cuba, Castro told the TV show that he considered a improved relations with Washington 'possible if the United States government wishes it,' he said. 'In that case, we would be agreed to seek and find a basis' for it.

Adopting a neo-conservative ideological position that refused diplomatic relations with any country it viewed antagonistically, the Bush administration departed dramatically from this behind-the-scenes tendency toward normalized relations. In fact, Bush took relations with Cuba to a new low. Bush officials even sloppily accused Cuba of trying to manufacture WMD in 2002, in an attempt to link it to its public relations campaign to start a war with Iraq. Soon after, others in the US intelligence community were forced to admit that they possessed no evidence or information that supported the claim.

For his part, President Obama has expressed a willingness to hold out an 'open hand' to countries the US normally views as hostile. During the campaign, Obama hinted at an interest in easing some of the harshest restrictions imposed on Cuba and Cuban Americans by the Bush administration, including allowing cultural exchanges between the two countries and allowing Cuban American families to send money to their families and travel there.

Ideally, lifting the entire embargo, much like the European Union has done, is the best way to normalize relations with Cuba. It would uphold the basic human right of free travel, open new business opportunities in both countries, and provide new avenues for the people of both countries to understand each other.

In fact, normalizing relations with Cuba would likely accomplish what Kissinger's aid predicted: better relations – and with that more trade and improved general security – with all of Latin America. That is change we can believe in!